What are the Most Popular Outdoor Advertising Options in India?

Published On
June 18, 2025
This blog covers the most common outdoor advertising options in India such as billboards, transit ads, street furniture, hoardings, banners, and retail ads. These cost-effective methods help brands increase their awareness, engagement, and customer reach constructively.

Every advertisement you see outside your home is a kind of outdoor advertising. They are everywhere, at the city market, in the malls, and on buses & metros. For most people, outdoor advertisements mean a banner or a billboard but there are several other kinds of advertisements that you should know about.
In this blog, we will discuss the most common outdoor advertisements in India. Notably, all of them are cost-effective and promise high ROI.

1. Billboard Advertisements

Billboards are huge metal structures on building tops or city areas. Brands often place their ads on these structures that are huge & have high visibility. Such ads are called Billboard Advertisements.
Billboard advertisements are one of the most common outdoor advertisements you can see. They come in different sizes & variations such as static, transit, and digital. Some billboards also use augmented reality, 3D screening, or interactive screens to get more engagement.
The only limitation of Billboard advertisements is that people passing by or in a vehicle see those for only a few seconds. This means brands have minimal time to catch attention and share the message.

2. Transit Advertisements

Transit advertisements are ads on wheels. Brands use buses, taxis, trains, metro, etc. to present their advertisements and promote them in multiple locations. The biggest advantage of transit advertising is more viewership time with the audience. People who travel by these modes of transport engage with such ads for 20-40 minutes on average. Moreover, transit advertisements move through places and communicate with thousands of commuters every day. As per a report, a transit advertisement may get up to lakhs of impressions per day.

3. Street Furniture

Street furniture are outdoor advertisements placed on roadside furniture. Notably, these ads are comparatively more affordable than billboards or transit. It is smaller in size and is placed alongside the streets at eye level. Since the traffic is mostly pedestrians or bikers, Street furniture offers high engagement and compelling exposure to them. Like billboards, street furniture ads come in both static & digital types. Street furniture ads produce maximum results alongside the main street but brands can place those anywhere including parks, bus shelters, rental bike stations, and street lights.

4. Banners

Banners are long pieces of cloth with an ad message. Banners are another affordable alternative to billboards and traditional media advertisements. They can produce high returns if brands consider unconventional creative ways to design them. There are different kinds of Banner advertisements; it has bridge banners, indoor banners, wall banners and standing banners. The names are given according to where the banner ads are installed. Bridge banners are placed on bridges whereas crossing roads to catch the attention of drivers and travelers. Indoor banners are placed in malls, metro stations, or sports grounds.

5. Hoardings

Hoarding advertisements are very similar to billboards. They also use metal structures to erect ads but they are placed majorly in two places only.

  • At the construction sites
  • On the sports ground

The hoardings at a construction site hide the messy ongoing work and use the construction site borders as an opportunity to promote brands. This strategy helps construction companies replace unpleasant sights with attractive advertisements. On the other hand, sports hoardings are placed in sports grounds and exposed to thousands of people at the same time. This makes them highly visible and gives brands instantaneous growth in their traffic.
The only disadvantage hoarding ads have is their limited reach to the audience. Though, these ads have high ad frequency which makes them highly impactful for specific audience.

6. Retail Advertisements

Retail advertisements are every kind of promotional material used in a retail store. Whenever someone enters a store, they see these advertisements as they shop. Most of the customers look for suggestions so let them explore your brand collections with retail advertisements. These advertisements may be anything such as:

  • Window displays: Attractive visual arrangements to attract consumers.
  • Point of sale: Any point where a consumer can make a purchase.
  • Packaging designs: Special packaging carries special messages.
  • In-store signage: signage ads within a store to direct consumers.

Every retail advertisement is a new chance to engage with the audience and give them a reason to purchase.

Conclusion

Outdoor advertisement is one of the traditional advertising methods and has been used for hundreds of years. However, the first modern Billboard came into existence in the 1930s.
From then till now, outdoor advertisements have helped businesses to get more customers and make more profit. There are several types of outdoor advertising but in this blog, we have discussed the most popular ad types that are cost-effective and promising to businesses.
Contact Vigyapan Mart today and get 360-degree advertising solutions.